Not Just Another Dose: The BridgIT Response to Rural and Remote Internet Training

Abstract

This paper examines the issue of rural women’s training in the use of information technology using the experience gained from a collaborative project conducted in 1996–1997 in Queensland, Enhancing Rural Women’s Access to Interactive Communication Technologies. The project’s aims were to facilitate rural women’s access to communication technologies (particularly email and the Internet), to enhance access to online information and services, to encourage new small business opportunities, and to provide rural women with a ‘voice’ to policy and decision makers. The project used communication technologies, particularly an email discussion group called welink, to create successful and close partnerships between women in rural communities, service providers in government and industry, and the Queensland University of Technology research team. The project clearly demonstrated the opportunities and potential new communication technologies could have for rural communities. However, this potential is limited by another finding of the project – that significant gaps exist in the current delivery of information technology training for women in rural areas. The purpose of this paper is to identify these gaps and the critical factors necessary for the successful take-up of communication technologies by rural women. Furthermore, the paper describes the way in which the challenge to address these gaps has been taken up by the Queensland Rural Women’s Network through the BridgIT program, a $2 million Networking the Nation project which offers localised information technology education and training to people in rural and regional areas.1 The Rural Women and Interactive Communication Technologies Project was an Australian Research Council Collaborative Research Project based at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane.2 Members of the research team were Dr Leonie Daws, Dr Margaret Grace, Ms June Lennie, Dr Roy Lundin, Ms Josephine Previte, Ms Lyn Simpson and Associate Professor Tony Stevenson.